Continuous Cleaning of Heat Exchanger with Recirculating Fluidized Bed

Abstract

Fluidized bed heat exchangers for liquids have been studied in the United States, the Netherlands, and the Federal Republic of Germany. Between 1965 and 1970, fluidized bed heat exchangers were developed in the United States as brine heaters in seawater desalination. Furthermore, their potential in the utilization of geothermal energy was tested between 1975 and 1980. In the Netherlands, fluidized bed heat exchangers have been developed since 1973 for brine heating and heat recovery in multistage flash evaporators for seawater desalination and, since about 1980, for applications in the process industry. The authors became interested in fluidized bed heat exchangers first in 1978 in connection with wastewater evaporation. The authors emphasize that the results of all these groups were in basic agreement. They can be summarized as follows: 1. The fluidized bed will in many cases maintain totally clean surfaces and neither scaling nor fouling will occur. In cases where even a fluidized bed cannot completely prevent scaling or fouling, the thickness of the layer is controlled. In these cases stable operation maintaining acceptable overall heat transfer coefficients is possible without cleaning. 2. There are always excellent heat transfer coefficients as low superficial velocities of less than ..nu.. < 0.5more » m/s. 3. The pressure losses are comparable with those in normal heat exchangers since fluidized bed heat exchangers are mostly operated at low superficial velocities. 4. Feed flow may be varied between 50 and 150% or more of the design feed flow. 5. Erosion is negligible. 6. Fluidized bed particles can be manufactured from all sorts of chemically and mechanically resistant materials, such as sand, glass, ceramics, and metals.« less